


Knots in the Tapestry

by ArvenaPeredhel



Series: Still Here, All That's Left Of... [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Moulin Rouge! (2001), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Titanic (1997)
Genre: Blood, Other, This is technically part of Still Here, there's a lot of reminiscing about violence and flashbacks etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 02:06:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11476344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: Obsession is a bottomless pit, and the act of being claimed is not worth envying.





	1. Susan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SerenLyall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenLyall/gifts).



> for Seren

Have I mentioned yet that I hate him? Because if I haven't, that seems like an excellent place to start.

I mean, he seemed nice enough when we met. He seemed kind, and genteel, and dignified. A real prince, the kind I used to dream about meeting back when I lived in London and the world was older. Before the bombs started falling, I was really someone else - naive, and starry-eyed, and fascinated by old stories of courtly love and high intrigue. I promised my mother I would be the next Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing at me, the flour on her hands cast up in the air by the sharp jerks of her shoulders. I was offended, and full of the righteous fury only a ten-year-old can muster. _"See what_ you _know,_ " I shot back, tiny hands on my hips, _"I'm going to do it, just you wait!"_

I might still do it, now that I think about it. After all, Eleanor hated her husbands, didn't she?

But I'm overstepping, getting ahead of myself. Again. I'm rather notorious for that, or at least Lucy says so. I shall begin anew, then (listen to me, _begin anew_ , even in the privacy of my own diary I talk like a queen) with an observation: Prince Rabadash of Calormen is a boorish, pigheaded, arrogant prick of a man and I don't give a damn if he reads this. In fact I bloody well hope he does. I know he means to marry me - I've sat through God knows how many state dinners and listened to an infinite stream of the same traditional love ballads again and again to have any illusions that he merely wants to be friends - but just the thought of spending more than a few seconds alone with him is enough to make me want to tear my hair out at the roots while screaming like an Irish banshee. I wonder if that would dissuade him. I've tried nearly everything else, including not bathing for as long as I could and hoping that the grease in my hair would put him off, but he seems impossible to (in the words of my mother) let down gently. And I am too polite and too aware of our political games to think of insulting him to his face. That would only bring war, and my probable imprisonment, and if I can do anything to prevent Edmund from challenging the heir apparent to all of this massively influential empire in a duel for my honor I will. I might only be a queen but I have my own weapons.

He says he is taken by my beauty, and to his credit, I am beautiful. Or at least they tell me I am. After a while the hushed awe that falls over a room when I enter clad in full high court regalia has dulled in my awareness to a simple fact of reality; I wonder if I really am as bright and shining as they say or if it's merely respect for my stature. Somehow I became a war hero? Somehow. Despite barely taking part in a battle. I can use the shock and awe and respect to my advantage, though, and that's enough for me. (And now I miss the gossiping insipid girls at my old boarding school more than ever - Maud Perkins and Edith Keeler once said I had no gift for rhetoric because they scored higher than me during a class debate. They thought they were being lofty and high-minded. If only they could see me here, in my element.) Rabadash, though, seems to be a formidable opponent - behind his eyes I see the ambition and the lust and while I can't say I'm frightened as of yet it is concerning. He won't be dazzled by my intellect or my charming speech or my impeccable manners. He is a man on a mission. My mother comes to mind again, kneading the dough for a loaf of bread as I sit at the table and watch her work. She is giving me a lecture on the perils of men. She warns me that they only want one thing - of course, I am eight years old, and she will not tell me what that thing is - and makes me promise to be careful. My mother, it stands to reason, would not like Prince Rabadash.

The days have dragged on, turning to weeks and now to nearly two months, and I am running out of time. Each day we meet he becomes less courtly and courteous, and the sharp edges in his voice grow more prominent. He takes my arm when we walk, and puts his hand on mine at the dinner table. Already I think he considers me property, and were I to try and escape - or tell him in stark and clear terms what I think of his veiled proposals - I think I'd be back in his room and bound to his bed within that same hour. What am I to do? If he tries to touch me I shall stab him, this I swear. My stays are made of reeds, and it shouldn't take too much effort to free a long sharp piece of wood. Yes. Stab him, and then tie every piece of cloth in the room together to form a rope and escape out the window. Even if I'm taken as a slave to one of the great estates in the south, it will be better than being bound to him.

Oh, God, don't let him marry me.


	2. Satine

This I know above all else: I am a stellar actress.

How else could I withstand the countless - truly, literally, countless - men who have come to the heart of my home and what has been dubiously called my bed? How else could I have endured night after night in ill-fitting corsets and costumes that chafed my thighs until they bled and yet never let the smile slip? They call me the sparkling diamond of all Paris, the star attraction at the most infamous club in Europe, and yet they think this comes naturally?

No. It's an illusion. I am an illusion. I prefer it to reality, for reality comes with bothersome strings attached.

And now I come back to Christian. Of all the strings that tie me, he is the one nearest and dearest to my heart. He's also the only man I've ever fucked for free, which is something I've never told him. I think it would make him smug, or at least self-righteous, and there is nothing that I tire of more quickly than a self-righteous man except one who believes that I dance on tables because I enjoy taking exercise. But despite this potential flaw I find I cannot bring myself to see him like the others, and the question of why perplexes and vexes me late into the night. At least our entanglements began on the final night of my old life? This is both a blessing and a curse, for while I don't doubt the jealousy that seeing me in another man's arms would stir I find myself perpetually short on funds. The street beckons now and again, and if I weren't rehearsing or in his arms from dawn to dawn I would slip out and find myself a few francs richer for a few minutes' easy work. But there is the matter of my heart, the damnably useless thing, and I cannot betray his trust in such a way.

Though, if I am truly honest with myself, it is not him I fret over.

I am bound by contract to our chief investor. He is my patron, and I am his companion, and the arrangement is one that weeks ago I would have cheered for. Exclusivity and security are the bywords of my trade - I have worked for years to secure myself loyal clientele, and now I am fortunate enough to never have to work again so long as I come to his bed. Except, of course, I haven't come to him, and here in the private recesses of my thoughts I can admit to myself that I hope I never will. There is only so much indignity a woman can take before she snaps and cracks under the strain; even the best actresses need a few minutes offstage in between performances. I had hoped at first that I wouldn't have to pretend. When Christian came to me, and I believed him to be the Duke of Monroth, the sparks between us were tangible. For a few glorious seconds I let myself dream of a lifetime as an honest woman, only to have those fancies ripped from me by the very man who began them. Needless to say I wanted nothing more than to throw him out of the window. It is a small miracle I restrained myself.

But let us return to the Duke, and to the pressing problem of my employment. As I have not yet come to his bed, I am unpaid save for the performers' stipend we all receive to keep us from starving. The promise of fabulous wealth and success is enough to sustain the musicians and the common dancing girls for whom this is truly the opportunity of a lifetime, but I am old by our standards and I have seen enough to know that promises often fail or falter. In an absolute emergency I might sell what little true jewelry I have, or pawn my clothes and live out of costumes, for Christian has even less money than I do (and I have lived this long without being beholden to any man save Harold, which is a state I wish to continue in) and every few days we do dream of running away.

Running away. _That_ is the true dream. I came to the gates of this place as a starving orphan of seven, and I have not left its boundaries since then, not even for the doctor or the bakery. I live my life like Elaine of Astolat, only I have windows in place of mirrors and messenger boys rather than a loom and raw thread; the thought of departure is at once exhilarating and terrifying. No. Better, for now at least, to stay, and face the future. Even if that future includes the loathsome Monroth. He cannot be that bad, he cannot be as cruel or filthy or depraved as the others I have clasped to my breast.

And yet there is something in his eyes, and his hands, and his voice.

I think I shall kill myself if he touches me.


	3. Rose

Oh, God, Christ almighty, I slept with him. I can never live it down.

It's not as if he gave me much of a choice in the matter, cornering me after dinner in the hall of our hotel, his lips on my neck and his breath hot and stinking of brandy. It's not as if my mother, sworn protector of my virtue, was there to save me. It's not as if the servants paid me any mind, or would have cared if I had cried for help. And so I tried to be proper, to talk him down, to dissuade him, to insist upon waiting, but when it was obvious he wouldn't listen I let him take my hand and lead me to his bed.

In my thoughts I was screaming at him, _no!_ over and over and over again. In my thoughts I was wishing he would die and plotting ways to escape. I thought for one moment he would have to leave me and I could slip out through the connecting door between our suites, when his man came to the door with questions about the following day, but his eyes were on me nearly all the time and I was paralyzed beneath their weight. Oh, I wanted to strangle myself in the bed sheets or smother myself against his pillow. If he'd turned his back on me for a moment I would have bashed my head against the wall, even. I read that trick in a French newspaper, some serial novel about an opera singer and a deformed murderer who stalked her. I'd have emulated her, given half a chance, and laughed while doing it. He doesn't like that I know French. He doesn't like a lot of things.

Not that I care.

I have resolved to make myself as obnoxious as possible on this return voyage to America. I do not want to get married, I do not want to be Lady Hockley, and I especially do not want to know that _he_ waits for me in our bedroom night after night. Perhaps a conversion to Catholicism? They believe sex ought to happen only for procreation, and not for its own sake, which is an approach I have always considered quite sensible in the warding off of unwanted husbandry. Yes, a conversion ought to do it. There are more than a few priests here, including one photographer I spotted on deck this morning. I ought to find him some lazy afternoon and enlist him in my cause.

Oh God, oh God, oh _God_ I slept with him. I keep coming back to that again and again, and each time it makes me want to find something made of glass and shatter it against the floor of my stateroom. I let him touch me. I let him kiss me. I let him fuck me. I did not scream or cry out or weep or resist, I simply let it happen. The shame is enough to drown my blood out in its miasma. The guilt is poisonous. I did not want him, I tried to tell him, and yet he persisted, and my one solace - the hope that now he'd gotten what he wanted his desire would be sated - has thus far proven false, for he's sent me discreet signals that demand I come attend him.

I won't do it again. I won't. I will be dead first.

We're at dinner now. He tried to order for me, and to dominate the conversation. When I pulled out a cigarette he took it and extinguished it. When I tried to talk to the other guests at our table he silenced me. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I hate him. He thinks he is the only person on this ship who has a brain, when I know I can out-think him because I have already done it. I am faster at math than he is, and quicker at languages. If I knew business as he does I am sure I would be at least his equal in the professional world. Now he's touching my arm and I am sure he thinks it is tender but Almighty God I wish I could take my fish fork and pin his wayward hand to the table. If it wouldn't leave stains for the staff to tend to, I am sure I would do it. I would. The fork is in my grasp, digging into my palm and fingers. My own hand is shaking. He has noticed. His eyes are sparks of animal lust.

Enough is enough.

I get up from the table, make my excuses, beg forgiveness and lie and say I have a headache and need to lie down. He suggests the cold night air as a restorative. I smile and the strain hurts my lips and I say I shall consider it, and I walk out the door, and I get onto the deck, and I start to run. The tears are streaming down my face, and my hair has slipped out of its chignon, but I keep going, half-tripping on the beaded train of my gown, until I've come all the way past the first-class deck down onto the stern of the ship. There is a boy on a bench, staring up at the stars, and he watches me go by. I pay him no mind. Now, at last, I know what I have to do.

One way or another, I will not be Caledon Hockley's wife.


	4. Kathryn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some really foul language and violent content here, guys. you've been warned.

"Let her go."

On my knees, gasping for breath, legs spread (held apart, scaled skin and sharp nails against my bare thighs) and mouth open. Can't breathe. Can't think. Tears, crying, misery, sheer hell. How many of them? How long have I been here? Don't know, don't care, can't care now. The cock in my mouth stiffens and throbs, spilling thick Cardassian cum down my throat. This has happened before. Can't count how often. The voice - the voice, commanding, intense, and the hands withdraw. I fall. Cold floor, slick and slippery, blood and piss and shit and semen. Footsteps, coming closer, shadow looming over me. No more hands, no more cocks, no more mouths. Grateful. Eyes open, I look up. Another man. Another Cardassian. New insignia, new uniform - gul? Maybe. Don't know. Can't think. No use for thinking here.

Hand on my shoulder - gentle, tender, caressing. "Look what they've done to you," he says, voice warm, demeanor kind. I am blinded by tears. I weep, I shake, I choke on spit and cum. I am lifted up - he lifts me - his hand moves my face. When I cough I can breathe. Open eyes, peer at his face. Kind? Careful? Caring? No way to know. Unsure. I tremble. He pulls me closer - hug? embrace? - with the other hand on my head. Brain pounds. Cunt oozes blood. Broken, broken, broken. His eyes on me. Can't look away. Won't look away. Breath raspy. Tears hot and stinging down my face. Hurt, hurt. Help. Want help. Please.

"This was never supposed to happen," he says. Rage and anger in his voice. Feels real. Feels false. Can trust? Can't trust. Cardassian. Liar. Dangerous. But pain, but fear, but rape. Need help. Need help. Can trust?

Mouth opens. Moan. Speak. Can't speak. Moan, whisper, whine, cry. Throat red and raw. Kill me. Kill me now. Too much hurt. Cannot live. Moan again. Plead in my eyes. Lift hands to his. Lips move, tongue bleeding, drip blood to floor. Save me. Save me. Save me. Must tell him. Must beg. Must trust. Can't trust. Can trust. Can't. No choice. Must try.

Other men watching. Waiting. Cocks out, eyes hungry. Please no more. God, no more. He leaves and I am lost. Try to speak again in his arms. He brushes dirt off my shoulder. He moves hair from my face. He is kind. Try to speak again. Gasping, choking, whining, begging. Desolate. Broken. Save me. Save me.

"This could all be over," he says, words firm, voice calm. "I could take you away from here. Keep you with me. They wouldn't hurt you again. They wouldn't dare." Silence from the other men. Falsehood? Obedience? Fear? Can't tell. He says "you would be safe with me." He says "I would protect you." Promises, promises. Sound good. Sound safe. Could get out, could get away, could sleep. Need sleep. Need safety. He says "all you would have to do is tell me what you and your captain were doing in our space", he says "promise to tell me and I will take you", he says many things.

Get out. Will get out. Talk and will get out, will get help. Trust Cardassians. Trust Cardassians? Liars. Liars. His eyes are hungry too. He lies.

Pull back. Jerk free. Fall to floor. Head hits the stone. Light behind my eyes. More pain. My head shaking. No. No. Will not. Will not. Will not.

He growls. He stands. He kicks me. I scream. Voice freed now. White stars of agony.

"You belong to me!" he says. "I say what happens to you. And I say you haven't learned your lesson yet."

He is gone. They descend. Fuck me, again.

Save me, save me.


	5. Leia

I am property now. I am a thing. Stripped, and branded, and wearing his colors. I belong to him.

I do not belong to him.

Before now, I never thought about slavery. It existed, I knew, on worlds that weren't mine. Palpatine sanctioned it, the Empire built itself on the back of it. But I ignored it, somehow, until now when the door's closed and I'm left on his bed in his chamber to wait. I'm surrounded by rot and decadence, arranged in the center of it all like the pet that apparently I have become. _Hah_. The thought makes me choke on my own laughter. If he thinks I'm merely going to wait for him, a passive flower waiting to be ravished, he's got another thing coming. For one horrifying moment I suspend escape plans and let myself wonder how, exactly, a two-ton slime-secreting nonhumanoid life form engages in recreational sex; this thought goes nowhere but dark and terrifying places and I force myself to laugh at the absurdity of Jabba the Hutt trying to fuck me so I can keep from shaking.

I tell myself that this is not the worst position I've ever been in. Being scheduled for execution was definitely riskier, and logically, this ought to be relatively simple. Jabba will insist on being left alone. He is slow, and ponderous, and I have had many self-defense classes. Glancing around the room I can see draperies, and sconces, and long lamps beside the barred windows - even now I'm not weaponless. And if need be, I'm more than willing to put his eyes out with the sharp edges of this lingerie.

So. I wait. I wait, and I force myself not to cry, and I run back over the plans in my head. The plans we made weeks ago, in the safety of deep space. The plans that are now useless, because Han is gods know where and I am locked up in a vault, a prized possession. A thing. I am a thing.

The cuts on my back are aching. I fought when they stripped me, when they took me to be processed, when they tore my clothes from my body and branded my ankle and slid their fingers inside me. I was not theirs to play with, and the forbidden nature of my presence was enough to send them into a frenzy. I thought they were going to rape me. I think they wanted to, and only fear for their lives held them back. But I fought back, and so I was punished, I was whipped and beaten and shocked with a prod meant for livestock. I was not an obedient slave. I will never be an obedient slave. I run my fingers over the hem of my skirt and with each stitch they pass over I tell myself 'resist' in a quiet murmured voice, weaving the promise to endure into hair and skin and blood and bone and soul. I know the gods of my people are dead, and I have slain them; still, I cannot resist a brief prayer to Mother Love that I will find my way out of here alive and unhurt.

His eyes haunt me, even now, alone and far removed from his presence. They were alight with familiar things as he looked at me - desire, lust, rage, control - and I wonder if he has seen my face before. I wonder if he is obsessed with me. If his joy and mingled emotions are a sign of a long-fulfilled fantasy, or merely the typical responses of a warlord bent on new conquests. Am I merely territory to him, or is it something more? Which would I prefer? If it is obsession, there are benefits. Weaknesses I can exploit. Being a good actress might net me a small fortune before I escape. But I would have to contend with his constant desire, with his manipulation and his presence, and I don't think I could feign enthusiasm for long. And if it's merely the joy of new victory, will I be tossed aside? Am I to be more heavily guarded, like the other slaves, in return for a waning of his affections?

I am being far too academic about this, I know. But my thoughts are all I have in the wake of sheer terror. To falter for a moment is to reveal how broken I truly am by this.

I am not a thing. I will, one day, escape.


	6. Meru

It hurts to move, to breathe, to live.

Again Skrain has taught me that within these walls he is the master, and this time the lesson was painfully learned. I tell myself that next time will be better, that I will learn and I will obey and I will be quicker, and in between each promise of improvement I curse myself with every breath for my weakness. I know I am broken beneath him. I know I am well-trained, and brought to heel. I know I love him, even, though whether or not I can call what we have close to love is a question I ponder in the black nights after he sleeps. I miss my family. I miss my children. I miss my husband. This is for them.

And yet I cannot deny the thrill that comes when he calls for me, the rush of adrenaline only awakened by his touch and his eyes and his voice. The stripes I earn through obedience and through rebellion drip the ink that writes our shared story, and we can only hold the pen together. He knows this, and I hate that he knows it, because he can and does use it to degrade and ruin me. He beckons, raises an eyebrow, says a few words, and I melt beneath him, and I love it, and I loathe it. He touches me and my skin crawls and my heart cries out for me to beg for more, he caresses me and my stomach churns and my senses sing his praises. I cannot win, I cannot lose. I can only endure, and wait for his fancy to pass, and wait to be left alone. 

When I am left alone I lock myself in the bathroom and scrub my skin raw with sandpaper smuggled out of the ore processing center. Always in places he won't find it, and always stopping short of leaving scars, but the gesture is there regardless. I must pay for my sins. I must pay, and pay dearly, or else I will forget my starving children, I will forget my husband, I will forget my people. I have already forgotten hunger and thirst and desperate endurance and the words to my prayers, I will not lose these last ties to who I was born as. The blood wells beneath my fingertips. The paper is stained red. I atone, I atone, I atone.

This time the penance is frantic, slicing into wounds just barely closed over. He beat me hard today, to correct me and teach me, and I am grateful he does not tire of me, I am grateful that he loves me. Loves me. Does he love me? No, I think, and scrub harder, until my skin is stripped of hair and epidermis and drips blood down around my ankles. I will soak myself in steaming water after this, hot enough to scald, hot enough to sear the pain into my memory. I must suffer for feeling. I must suffer for surviving. I must suffer for loving.

In my heart of hearts I wonder if I can call myself a victim. I remember Luma Rahl that first night, warning me that Skrain was manipulative, cautioning me against trusting him. I remember her biting words demanding that I answer for my actions. I ponder the events of my captivity, I weigh every action and reaction. Can I call myself a victim if I loved him? Can I call myself a victim if he loves me? He has never once said that he does, but there is such tenderness in his hands and his face and his eyes as we talk. Sometimes I go to him and it is blissful, it is perfect, I have never been happier or more complete than here and now beneath him with his hands on me and my legs open to let him in. In those moments I can safely say I love him, and if he were to tell me he loved me I would believe him. But other times he is cruel, and cold, and harsh. He beats me for no reason, he forces me to perform for him, he trains and retrains me until I am no more than an expression of his will. I do not believe he loves me then, but regardless of what he feels I still love him. Should I resent myself for what I feel? Should I demand my wayward and whoring heart be faithful to a man I haven't seen in years?

The answers are not easily found.

In the meantime, I scrub harder.


End file.
